re: Installed my first bitcoin miner...

quote:4- What are my expectations? I'll be thrilled if over time my pc discovers a bitcoin block and I get 50 bitcoins. Then I dunno. I'll have 50 bitcoins.

just FYI, the current block reward is 25 bitcoins.

eta: you're much better off joining a mining pool. you will actually get some bitcoins that way (probably just fractions if you're only mining with a single GPU). if you solo mine, you may never ever solve a block

re: Installed my first bitcoin miner...(Posted by Meauxjeaux on 2/27/13 at 9:45 am to WikiTiger)

quote:eta: you're much better off joining a mining pool. you will actually get some bitcoins that way (probably just fractions if you're only mining with a single GPU). if you solo mine, you may never ever solve a block

Solo mining, but will probably fire up a couple more and join a pool.

Also, I tithe, so God will bless me in the discovery portion. (I had to drop that one on you )

Bitcoin, the digital currency that some people have called "dangerous", has just had a major setback today thanks to a significant data breach.

The main Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, has suffered a major database breach which caused one account in particular to be completely compromised and have its funds stolen. The real implication of this was the effect it had on the Bitcoin market - this video shows the market in real time dropping to values below 1 cent in a matter of minutes as people frantically try to remove their funds.

re: Installed my first bitcoin miner...(Posted by WikiTiger on 2/27/13 at 11:43 am to Lsut81)

quote:There is nothing backing it... It is made up.

And yet it is currently exchanging for $31.39, nearly at it's all time high.

And yet there are still people out there who attempt to spread FUD by posting lies. For instance:

quote:The Bitcoin price did NOT fall to $0.01 in June 2011.

The backstory behind this myth is an event in June where an administrator account at MtGox, a Bitcoin exchange which had over 80% market share at the time, was hacked, and the attacker managed to manipulate MtGox’s database tables to create a balance of 2 million bitcoins within his account and immediately sold them, consuming all of the buy orders that had been placed on the site in the months before going from $17.50 all the way down to $0.01. However, what sank to $0.01 was not the actual Bitcoin price, but rather a MtGox representation of the price. A price is, by definition, a value in exchange for which something is being bought and sold at a given time. In this case, however, MtGox later rolled back all of the trades that had happened during the event, so no lasting purchase or sale was actually made at anything less than $10. MtGox’s price charts show no transactions happening on the day. Aside from the attacker, no human being was, at any point, willing to sell bitcoins at anything close to $0.01 – the orders that were processed were all made weeks and months before the event, and at exchanges other than MtGox, the price generally remained at a healthy $13-$18. And, most importantly of all, the 2 million BTC that were sold were not even real bitcoins – they were simply fraudulent entries in MtGox’s database. Although it is understandable how some can interpret the event as the price dropping to $0.01, pointing to this incident as a sign of Bitcoin’s price instability is highly disingenuous – the root cause was a security mishap at a third party service, not a sudden loss of confidence in the currency. Incidentally, if the MtGox hack does count as the Bitcoin price dropping to $0.01, then another, less known, MtGox glitch deserves to count as the Bitcoin price reaching $1 billion.

Hackers may successfully attack third party sites. And they have done so in the past. The bitcoin protocol, however, is secure, and as I've repeatedly stated, is based on very strong crpytography that would take billions of years to crack with current technology. Not only that, but the crpytography can be upgraded if necessary.

quote:People don't honor bitcoins for real currency if there is a mass run to withdraw funds

re: Installed my first bitcoin miner...(Posted by WikiTiger on 2/27/13 at 12:03 pm to Lsut81)

quote:Isn't one of the benefits of Bitcoins that you can cash them out for USDs?

What happens if organizations refuse to exchange for currency during a tank?

The value of a bitcoin is determined by supply and demand. USD's are commonly used because that's how we as Americans think of value. Bitcoins are exchanged for many other currencies all over the world as well, however. If your concern is a sudden crash in exchange rate, then I suppose that's a legitimate concern. That can happen with any currency though. All you're really doing is stating that you don't trust bitcoin. That's ok. You don't have to. Many people do already. Many more will do so in the future.

But the great thing about bitcoin is that no one will be forced to use it. Don't you think that's a good thing?